What Is an Ocean Model?
Welcome to the first lecture of the week. Fernand Assene begins with the most basic question of all: what exactly is an ocean model?
An ocean model is a mathematical and numerical simulation of ocean properties and circulation, solved on a discrete grid in space and time. The idea is to take the real, continuous ocean – all its currents, temperature gradients, and living activity – and represent it as a set of equations that a computer can solve at a finite number of points.
In this lecture you’ll explore:
- What a model represents – not just physics (temperature, salinity, sea level, waves, currents), but also chemistry, biology, and the ocean’s interactions with the atmosphere and the rest of the Earth system
- Its mathematical foundation – the primitive equations, built on three conservation laws: momentum (how water moves in response to forces), mass (water is neither created nor destroyed), and heat and salt
- What a model needs to simulate the ocean, and the variables it solves for
- Why models are essential in the first place
You’ll see the equations on screen, but don’t worry about the mathematics – this week is about understanding models, not deriving or building them. The goal is to grasp the idea: a model turns the laws of ocean physics into something a computer can calculate and predict.
